changing floating point number input.. (was realroots...)

putting MPFR into each lisp would be a pain in the butt.
putting MPFR into ONE lisp (e.g., Allegro CL on Windows-- which I've already
done)
uses non-ANSI CL features.  

Maybe someone more expert on the "universal" foreign function stuff can look
at it.
RJF


> -----Original Message-----
> From: maxima-bounces at math.utexas.edu 
> [mailto:maxima-bounces at math.utexas.edu] On Behalf Of Robert Dodier
> Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 10:19 PM
> To: Richard Fateman
> Cc: maxima
> Subject: Re: [Maxima] changing floating point number input.. 
> (was realroots...)
> 
> On 8/27/06, Richard Fateman <fateman at cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> 
> >  We could adopt MPFR wholesale for all floats, and have special 
> > routines that take these numbers and map them down to double-floats 
> > when speed counts, e.g. crunching numbers for linear 
> algebra. This is 
> > usually very reasonable, since the conversion is "linear time" and 
> > most of the other stuff is much slower.
> 
> That sounds pretty interesting. I'm not 100% sure we should 
> do it, but if you are willing to go into the details, I'm 
> interested to hear about it.
> 
> Robert
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